


Tulips for Ms. Tate

by chucks_prophet



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Senior Home, Angst and Humor, Birthday Party, Caterer Dean, Chef Benny, Chef Dean, Episode: s08e08 Hunteri Heroici, Heavy Angst, Humor, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mild Sexual Lingo, Nurse Meg, Sad with a Happy Ending, Visitor Castiel, assisted living
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-26
Updated: 2016-07-26
Packaged: 2018-07-26 19:26:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,099
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7586893
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chucks_prophet/pseuds/chucks_prophet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You think that’s why Ethan and Charles are her exes?” Dean asks as an afterthought. “They were… grounding each other’s corn?”</p><p>Cas shrugs, though there’s still some shyness retained in his actions. “Your guess is as good as mine; she doesn’t talk about her husbands beyond physical appearance. Apparently Charles was a bounder.”</p><p>Dean chuckles, “Would you consider yourself a bounder, Charles?”</p><p>“I don’t know,” Cas says, “would you, Ethan, consider yourself a corn grounder?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tulips for Ms. Tate

Cars skitter across the dancing road in a blur. The sound of the torrent is low and guttural, almost demonic when it soaks through Dean’s clothes and slaps his chest like a weeping lover. As a direct result, a ripple passes through him, shaking his ribcage. The wind is like a December in Illinois: unforgiving.

Dean can see him because he’s not fighting against the rain as hard. In fact, he’s as still as the headstone he's standing in front of with a red hoodie pulled over him.

The sound must whitewash the rain, because when Dean's right boot slides into a pothole, the figure up ahead snaps his head to the side and braves a few steps forward with the vigilance—unfortunately not the stealth with the slosh from seconds old downpour—of a cat. “Dean?”

“Cas.” The name warms his tongue like a dam of unspoken prayers before dissolving into a cloud of white.

Cas’s voice, typically packed with enough gravel to fill the cracks in the sidewalks of the adjacent neighborhoods, comes out a whisper, “You shouldn’t be here.”

"You shouldn't either."

Like the weather, there's no heat behind the statement. Dean's green eyes search Cas's blue until he witnesses them fold from the paperweight of losing. He collapses onto Dean's with a sob. "She was my best f-friend."

"I know," Dean replies. Another ripple hits him, but for an entirely different reason. He slides his forehead against Cas's temple easier than china from the same set, no thanks to the earth's dishwasher. He smells like rain and sweat, despite how dehydrated he looks. It only makes Dean hold him tighter.

They stay intertwined despite Mother Nature's strong attempts to keep them apart, knowing nothing—not even an impromptu love confession—is quite carved in stone like a plaque.

**Two Weeks Earlier**

They say the squeaky wheel gets the grease, but Dean’s been peddling the same serving trolley for three years, and never once has anyone bothered to fix it. The sound, it’s like someone snatched a dozen hearing aids and arranged them in a mini dune to communicate amongst themselves—or, to put it in the language of dumbing down America, a typical episode of _The View._

Not to say Dean hates his job—far from it, actually. If there’s anything better than being surrounded by plates of home-cooked food, food that _he_ prepared, nonetheless, it’s being his own boss. That’s right: Serving people, catering things. Dean took over the family business in his early twenties after reviving his love for cooking.

Unlike his unlimited knowledge of cars, his culinary skills weren’t instilled by a middle-aged (but loveable) grump. One day, Dean slipped on a pair of mittens he found in the bottom kitchen drawer—his mother’s, judging by the technicolor squares featuring Paul, George, John, and Ringo; she loved the Beatles—and started baking. John _despised_ the idea of his son cooking. To this day, he thinks it isn’t as macho as fixing a carburetor, but Dean, with the strong, Southern persuasion of Benny, his business partner and best friend, cultivated a dream his mother never got to finish entitled Cain’s Catering.

The cart is still annoying, though.

“Martin, you know I’m not one to bag on sweets—especially since _I_ had a literal hand in making it—but you have to eat something other than cherry pie.”

Martin Creaser lifts his long face to stare at Dean through those glassy, gray eyes, the kind that feeds on other people’s happiness like Famine. Despite that he’s only 59, Martin’s permanent stay is valid due to early onset Alzheimer’s. But if you ask Dean, who has no medical background whatsoever, but a _lot_ of experience with people, the guy should have been admitted to a psychiatric hospital. He practically terrorizes the other seniors and has a weird fixation on Benny, who he believes to be a vampire.

“I can hear you guys, you know,” he warns, lifting a boney finger. “I know you two are conspiring against me.”

“Sorry about that, we try to do it out of earshot, but you know this place.” Dean leans in a little before tossing glances in both directions. “ _Everyone’s_ listening. They say they didn’t hear you, or they forgot to put in their aids, but they’re just trying to keep you quiet. Meg’s the worst.”

Martin’s eyes widen at the name. “You’ve noticed her, too!”

Speak of the devil, Meg rolls around the corner with a quirked brow. Her blue scrubs are lightly stained with something red, presumably Jell-O, unless you’re Martin, and her ponytail, typically tight, much like her personality, is unraveling like a reusable Christmas bow. “What’re you saying about me now, Dean?”

“You’re _demon_ spawn,” Martin curses before sliding his cherry-slathered fork into his mouth.

“Lovely,” she says, unimpressed. “Busboy, Ms. Tate is waiting on her omelet.”

Dean nods before wheeling his cart down the hallway. He’s usually not quick to leave the patients, but any excuse to move on from Martin the Madman is a good enough excuse.

That, and Ms. Tate’s popular visitor next to her cat is Castiel Novak. Cas visits once or twice a week—more than most of the other’s kids, and he’s not even her grandson. Hell, the two aren’t even related. Cas met Ms. Tate through his mother, Naomi, former head doctor at Sioux Falls Hospital, when he was little.

Ms. Tate had been involved in a car accident that had her practically unscathed physically, but left her mentally imbalanced. Her long-term memory serves her well, but her short-term is almost nonexistent. And now that she’s older, her long-term is starting to fade as well.

Cas brought her tulips every week she was in recovery, and keeps doing to this day, something he prides himself in whenever the nurses walk in and ask who her sugar daddy is. Surprisingly, according to Ms. Tate, Cas bears a striking resemblance to her late third husband, Charles, from the short swirl of dark hair, the dark blue eyes, even his lips, which are more or less two pink body pillows crammed to fit one mouth.

And, well, from Dean’s perspective, Ms. Tate has good taste—the same taste as Dean’s.

Sure enough, Dean walks in, spotting the bouquet of tulips before Cas himself. He knocks twice for good measure before he hears Cas’s Atlantic-deep voice give him the okay. Cas usually answers for her. Not because she can’t speak or doesn’t want to, but because Cas is highly protective of her. It’s cute.

“Ms. Tate,” Dean greets, rolling in. He steals a warm, concealed plate from the top and sets it on her TV tray. “Your omelet, diced ham sprinkled with cheese and a dollop of sour cream. Would you like orange juice?”

“You’re too good to me, Ethan.” (Her _second_ late husband.) She scrunches her wrinkled brows in thought before her lips turn up in a smile. “Orange juice sounds splendid, but only a small glass. I have to watch my girlish figure, you know.”

Dean grins. Ms. Tate has to be his favorite patient next to Fred Jones, but that’s mostly because he lets Dean sit and watch cartoons with him on break. “I don’t think you have to worry about Cas going too far, Ms. Tate.”

“Nonsense,” Ms. Tate says. “He could have anybody he wants, he’s so handsome.”

“Oh stop, Sheila.”

“No you stop being so _modest,_ boy. Isn’t he handsome, Ethan?”

Dean turns to Cas, who’s blushing profusely on the edge of her bed and staring up at Dean like a peasant to his King, begging to spare him from any more public mortification. “Uh, yeah, no, he’s uhm… is this enough orange juice?” Dean asks, intercepting his thoughts to hold up the glass. Ms. Tate nods, having forgotten her original question in favor of her beverage. “Well, I better go see if Benny needs help in the kitchen…”

“Thank you, Ethan,” Ms. Tate says, saluting him with the wave of her fork.

Much to Dean’s surprise, as he’s pushing out the door, Cas anchors him back in with a single word: “Stay.” Then, scratching his neck, amends, “I mean, you don’t have to go right away. I know Ms. Tate enjoys your company, and your next shift doesn’t start for another few hours—”

“You said _you_ enjoy his company too, Castiel.”

Cas turns around to face Ms. Tate. “ _That_ you remember.”

“Hey,” Ms. Tate argues through a mouthful of egg, “I’m old, not _deaf.”_

“Okay,” Dean replies, biting back a smile. He fails, however, when Cas swivels around with one of his own. It’s gummy and wide and over much too soon when Cas angles his head into the lapels of his trenchcoat to hide it.

Dean stays thirty minutes past his lunch shift.

***

“You know, for a business partner, you’re not much _in_ the business lately,” Benny comments with not as much sass as he’d like, having stirring two bags of flour for quite some time. Ms. Tate may be turning seventy, but that doesn’t give her any less of an incentive to be as picky as she wants. The way Dean sees it, if she wants a triple-layer strawberry shortcake cake with extra strawberries and pink frosting, who is he to deny her? (As long as _he’s_ not the one making it.)

Dean leans against the counter with a sigh. “Yeah, sorry about that. I’ve had a bigger list than usual.”

“Dean, _I_ write the lists. Is it about that Cas guy?” Dean hisses when his hand slips into a haphazardly stacked pile of forks in the sink. Benny laughs. “That’s cute, brotha.”

“You know what else’s cute? Watching a thirty-year-old man trip over a trolley trying to flirt with someone.”

“She’s outta my league, alright? Ya happy?”

“Oh _I_ could’ve told you Andrea’s out of your league, Benny. You’re trying to bat 1000 on that one.”

Benny scoffs, pointing a meaty (and still floury) finger at him, “You just wait, Chief.”

“For what?” Dean laughs, “You think Cas is outta my league?”

“He’s wearing a suit today.”

Dean and Benny’s eyes do a little dance. It’s the salsa, spinning and spinning until—“You’re clowning,” he says, shaking his head just before the big dip: “You’re not clowning.” The thought of Cas in a suit has him spinning even faster—

Benny, the smug sob, hands him the tray with the cake. “Go find out for yourself. Main lobby.”

***

Cas _is_ wearing a suit. It’s not just the two-piece he wears underneath his raggedy trenchcoat, but a full-on tuxedo, a silk royal blue with black lapels to compliment his eyes with a white button-down and bowtie. His hair, rather than a dollop of sour cream perched on his head, is combed over his scalp like cream cheese on a freshly toasted bun. He’s grown his beard a little last Dean saw him, easily putting him in his late twenties.

The only words Dean can find after setting the cake on the main table across from Ms. Tate, who adorns her favorite pink dress with her prized diamond set and white hair extra fluffed, are: “Wow, I feel underdressed.”

Cas turns to Dean from his firm stance next to the birthday girl with a wide smile. Upon closer inspection, Dean can see a tulip tucked into the side pocket of Cas’s coat. “Dean. I didn’t know you worked nights.”

“I don’t, but I couldn’t miss Ms. Tate’s party,” he replies, stealing unrequited glances with the dozen or so seniors and nurses, respectively, gathered around Ms. Tate’s table. Some linger, but most talk excitably amongst themselves. Fred, who actually came out of his room for the event, even offers her his Jell-O cup. “How many opportunities will she have to be seventy?”

Cas grins from Dean to Ms. Tate, whom he wraps an arm around. “Couldn’t agree more.”

The party begins and ends with a blowout, from Ms. Tate’s candles to one of the nurses popping a bottle of champagne. That is, _before_ she gets carted away by a burly man in a green apron. Andrea is eye-catching; Dean will give Benny that, but she’s nothing compared to Ms. Tate—at least according to the adoration reflecting in Cas’s eyes. Dean’s never seen a man bursting with so much love for someone. By the end of the night, when they’re the only two seated next to Ms. Tate, it makes him start to look at Cas the same way.

“Thank you, boys,” Ms. Tate says, raising her glass for another toast. “My handsome, handsome boys.”

Age is also no excuse for Ms. Tate to get completely hammered. “You’re welcome, Ms. Tate,” Dean replies.

“Oh so _formal,”_ she mocks. “Please, Ethan, we were married for fifteen years.”

“Sorry, Sheila.”

“It’s alright, dear, I’m drunk anyhow. Cas,” Sheila starts, swiveling her head toward the dapper guest.

Cas smiles. “Yes, Sheila?”

“When are you going to let Ethan ground your corn?”

Dean’s eyes pop out like two shiny Granny Smiths. It takes a moment before Cas turns to Dean, face wearing a color that’s a stark contrast to his suit. “Um,” Cas says, “we’re not together, Sheila.”

Sheila wags her finger before scooting out of her chair, “You’re not fooling anyone, dear. I’ll let you two figure things out. I’m going to go to bed.”

After Cas gives her a proper goodbye and Dean helps tuck her in, Dean and Cas amble down the hallway with no destination in mind. “You think that’s why Ethan and Charles are her exes?” Dean asks as an afterthought. “They were… grounding each other’s corn?”

Cas shrugs, though there’s still some shyness retained in his actions. “Your guess is as good as mine; she doesn’t talk about her husbands beyond physical appearance. Apparently Charles was a bounder.”

Dean chuckles, “Would you consider yourself a _bounder,_ Charles?”

“I don’t know,” Cas says, “would you, Ethan, consider yourself a corn grounder?”

Dean bites back a smirk as he turns to face Cas. God, Sheila’s right: He is gorgeous. Especially when he gets a little too close in his personal space, pinning him against the wall, and… wait. “I… uhm,” Dean pauses to flick his eyes to Cas’s lips and inhales a whiff of aftershave and champagne, “I mean, I _could_ be a corn grounder.”

Their lips don’t separate until security tows them out.

***

Dean waltzes into work with a spring in his step, despite the pouring rain. He heads to the kitchen, greets Benny, and wheels off with the trolley.

His spring busts all too quick, however, when he steps into Sheila’s room. The place is wiped clean, minus a wilting bouquet of tulips. The bed’s made, the tack board is clean of any pictures or little handmade notes from what looks— _looked_ —to be a second or third grader’s handwriting… everything that is Ms. Tate, gone. It’s like room’s personality reset to default.

“Hey, Meg,” he blurts, catching her in the hallway before she goes into another room, “where’s Cas?”

“Harold? He’s at the graveyard. Maude passed away last weekend.”

***

Cars skitter across the dancing road in a blur. The sound of the torrent is low and guttural, almost demonic when it soaks through Dean’s clothes and slaps his chest like a weeping lover. As a direct result, a ripple passes through him, shaking his ribcage. The wind is like a December in Illinois: unforgiving.

Dean can see him because he’s not fighting against the rain as hard. In fact, he’s as still as the headstone he's standing in front of with a red hoodie pulled over him.

The sound must whitewash the rain, because when Dean's right boot slides into a pothole, the figure up ahead snaps his head to the side and braves a few steps forward with the vigilance—unfortunately not the stealth with the slosh from seconds old downpour—of a cat. “Dean?”

“Cas.” The name warms his tongue like a dam of unspoken prayers before dissolving into a cloud of white.

Cas’s voice, typically packed with enough gravel to fill the cracks in the sidewalks of the adjacent neighborhoods, comes out a whisper, “You shouldn’t be here.”

"You shouldn't either."

Like the weather, there's no heat behind the statement. Dean's green eyes search Cas's blue until he witnesses them fold from the paperweight of losing. He collapses onto Dean's with a sob. "She was my best f-friend."

"I know," Dean replies. Another ripple hits him, but for an entirely different reason. He slides his forehead against Cas's temple easier than china from the same set, no thanks to the earth's dishwasher. He smells like rain and sweat, despite how dehydrated he looks. It only makes Dean hold him tighter.

They stay intertwined despite Mother Nature's strong attempts to keep them apart, knowing nothing—not even an impromptu love confession—is quite carved in stone like a plaque.

**Five Years Later**

“Dean, are you forgetting something?”

Dean’s eyes skate between his husband’s and his daughter, Mary’s. Then it hits him just before he buzzes out the door again: Keys. Can’t drive to work without his keys. Mary stares up at him through wide, hazel eyes as if to say, _This is all on you, Papa,_ which, it probably is, but Dean will never admit to being outsmarted by his seven-year-old daughter. And she has his mother’s eyes, so he can’t really find it in him to fight. “Godda—”

“Swear jar!” Mary chimes. “Papa owes a quarter!”

“Jar… _jar.”_ Dean zips to the kitchen where the flowers he brought home to Cas yesterday are. Sure enough, his keys are drowning at the bottom of the vase. Dean plucks them out and shakes them off with a groan, much to the amusement of Cas. “Hey, it was a wild night for the both of us, alright?”

Cas hums, pulling Dean in by the nape of his neck with a gummy smile, “Hmm, but it was the best.”

“Happy anniversary, babe,” he says, echoing the same words from last night when they were cocooned in bed as he swoops down to kiss Cas. Cas returns the embrace, but not too much. He knows Dean can’t afford to be late a _fourth_ time. If he uses ‘Cas had an emergency’ one more time, his boss will get concerned.

Instead, Cas pushes his face away lightly. “Happy anniversary. Now get moving.”

“Sir, yes, sir,” Dean salutes, arm and all, before scooting Mary out the door first.

On his way to the car, Dean passes the garden, where a dozen tulips are blossoming, and he smiles.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I got Ms. Tate's "lingo" from this (I dare you to read it, it's pretty amusing):  
> http://mentalfloss.com/article/57872/31-adorable-slang-terms-sexual-intercourse-last-600-years


End file.
